184 THE HOUSE OF AMERICA. 



This very comprehensive little paragraph, put modestly and 

 tentatively rather than positively, contained a germ of thought 

 that is to-day exerting a very wide influence. So far as my knowl- 

 edge goes, this was the first time in which the public attention had 

 ever been called to the intimate relations between speed at the 

 pace and speed at the trot. Some laughed at it as not practical, 

 others sneered at it as a theoretical abstraction, a few gave it some 

 thought, while the writers who never think left it severely alone. 

 It required the cumulative experiences of nearly ten years before 

 horsemen generally began to think about it, and then ten more; 

 before the germ had matured itself in the minds of all intelligent 

 men who were able to divest themselves of their earlier preju- 

 dices. The great primary truth now stands out in high relief 

 that the pace and the trot are simply two forms of one and the 

 same gait, that lies midway between the walk and the gallop. 

 At last the truth, dimly foreshadowed in the paragraph above, i& 

 received and accepted, in some form or other, almost if not quite 

 universally. This fact and its acceptance are now shown in all the 

 recorded experiences of racing, and especially in the origin and 

 habits of action of many of the heads of trotting and pacing 

 families, to which the reader is referred. 



At the beginning of Chapter XIII. I have labored to make 

 plain the proposition that the pace and the trot are simply two- 

 forms of one and the same gait. This is evident from the fact 

 that this gait, in one form or the other, is the intermediate link be- 

 tween the walk and the gallop, and this is true among nearly all 

 quadrupeds. I have also there shown, and I think beyond cavil,, 

 that the mechanism of the pace and the trot is the same, and 

 especially in the fact that in both forms two legs are used as one 

 leg. That is, if the two legs on the same side move together, we 

 call it the pace, and if the diagonal legs move together we call it 

 the trot. The rhythm is the same and the sound is the same, 

 and by the ear no man can tell whether the movement is at the 

 lateral or diagonal motion. In all the varieties of steps that a 

 horse may be taught, and in all the methods of progression that 

 he may naturally adopt, there is no step or movement in which 

 he uses two legs as one except in the pace or the trot. From the 

 place, therefore, which these two forms of the gait hold, indiffer- 

 ently, in animal movement, between the walk and the gallop; 

 from the unity of action and result in the use of the same mech- 

 anism, and from the wide disparity between the mechanism of 



